It’s the experience that counts

Some of you may remem­ber Adobe Symposium’s hum­ble begin­nings in 2012, where just a few hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered to start our con­ver­sa­tion about trans­for­ma­tion. Fast for­ward five years and we expect about 2,000 peo­ple to join us in Syd­ney and Sin­ga­pore to talk about trans­for­ma­tion, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and how we can lever­age the bleed­ing edge of inno­va­tion to dri­ve busi­ness growth.

A lot has changed in the past five years for busi­ness­es. Dis­rup­tion has changed the way we live and do busi­ness, and at the heart of this is the chang­ing role of mar­ket­ing in our busi­ness strate­gies.

As I trav­el around Aus­tralia and attend region­al meet­ings with cus­tomers and part­ners, there is one thing I notice that has become very clear – organ­i­sa­tions embrac­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and invest­ing in trans­for­ma­tion are pulling ahead of their com­peti­tors.

Customer experience is the new competitive differentiator

The dig­i­tal land­scape is rock­ing glob­al enter­pris­es, with peo­ple inter­act­ing through mobile devices, wear­ables, tablets, and even car dash­boards.

Con­sumers’ increased expec­ta­tions have brought us to a tip­ping point where expe­ri­ence must be at the cen­tre of every­thing we do – cus­tomers want the best and they won’t tol­er­ate bad expe­ri­ences.

The chal­lenge for brands is to trans­form their busi­ness mod­els to ensure that the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is now at the fore­front of their think­ing.

The third wave is upon us

This new expe­ri­ence era rep­re­sents the third wave of enter­prise dis­rup­tion over the past 50 years. The first wave affect­ed the back-office and began in the 1960s in the ear­ly days of com­put­ing. Dur­ing that peri­od, it became pos­si­ble to dig­i­tal­ly con­nect dif­fer­ent parts of an organ­i­sa­tion for the first time.

These sys­tems became known as ERP or MRP and drove effi­cien­cies in man­u­fac­tur­ing and pro­duc­tion process­es.

The sec­ond wave was the CRM rev­o­lu­tion and focused on trans­form­ing the front office, man­ag­ing sales teams and cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions.

The first two waves were about the busi­ness and help­ing us do our jobs more effi­cient­ly.

The third wave, how­ev­er, is not about the busi­ness – it’s all about the expe­ri­ence we pro­vide the con­sumer as they shop, buy and use our prod­ucts and it will be cru­cial for future busi­ness suc­cess.

Don’t miss an exclu­sive chance to see Paul Rob­son open Adobe Sym­po­sium 2016. Hear how dig­i­tal has changed busi­ness and how your cus­tomers are more con­nect­ed than ever. Reg­is­ter here .

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Paul Robson

Paul Robson is Adobe’s President for Asia Pacific, leading the company’s growth in this important region. Paul is a dynamic and respected leader in the IT and digital marketing sectors with a proven history of leading business transformation initiatives at both an operational and executive level.